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Issues and debates - Coggle Diagram
Issues and debates
Gender & cultural bias
Gender bias: bias made towards one gender, behavior and is then applied to the other gender. Mainly caused by only researching one gender. Links to Milgram and Zimbardo.
Androcentrism: refers to theories which focus on males only. The theory generated from research is then applied to both genders. Assumes male behavior is the norm. Gynocentrism is the opposite.
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Beta bias: when differences between the genders are minimized e.g flight or fight response (both genders are said to react similarly/the same).
Culture bias: act of interpreting & judging behavior and psychological characteristics of 1 culture by holding them against the standards of your own culture. Ethnocentrism causes culture bias.
Ethnocentrism: Innapropriately generalising the research findings of one culture to another/all cultures without testing them.
Etic approach: may amplify cultural bias, research is carried out across cultures to discover what behaviors may be universal. Imposed etic: ignoring cultural diffs.
Emic approach: reduces cultural bias, one culture is studied to discover culture specific behavior, not generalised.
Holism & reductionism
Reductionism: the idea that behavior is explained by simplifying the reasons down to a single variable.
Holism: is the idea that behavior should be viewed as complex and as a whole not as separate parts. Several levels of explanation.
Levels of explanation: highest level = holism (cultural and social explanations for behaviour), middle level = psychological explanations & the lowest level = reductionist (biological explanations).
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Environmental reductionism: behaviorist approach, suggests only observable behavior should be studied & it can be broken up into stimulus-response links and OC/CC. Links to phobias.
Nature v Nurture
Nature: refers to all genes/hereditary factors that influence who we are (physical & personality). Refers to evolution and genotypes/phenotypes. Also known as nativism.
Nurture: refers to all environmental variables which influence who we are e.g childhood, social groups and culture. John Locke = tabula rasa. Also known as empiricism.
Heritability coefficient: used to assess heredity. Ranges from 0 - 1, which indicates the extent that the characteristic has a genetic basis.
Diathesis-stress model suggest that both nature & nurture are critical for mental illness. Diathesis links to the idea of how vulnerable someone is to developing a disorder and the stressor (grief, alcoholism, drugs ect) triggers the gene meaning the disorder starts e.g schizophrenia or depression.
Idiographic & Nomothetic
Idiographic: attempts to explain the nature of individuals. People should be studied as unique entitiies, takes into account subjective experiences, motivations & values. Does not attempt to create general laws - challenges them.
Idiographic approach produces detailed qualitative data, uses lots of self-report techniques and interviews. An example is the case study of Phineas Gage.
Nomothetic: main aim is to produce general laws of human behavior. Benchmark by which people can be compared, classified or measured against. Example would be Milgram's research.
It has produced 3 gen laws according to Radford & Kirby (1975): classifying people into groups, establishing principles of applicable behavior & establishing dimensions which people can be compared, measured or placed against.
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Free will & determinism
Free will: full choice over actions without influence/manipulation. Behavior is what we genuinely want to do.
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Eval points for free will: unscientific, pure free will is impossible.
Determinism: behavior is caused by something else, we have little/no control over our behavior. Caused by determinants.
Types of determinism: biological, environmental and psychic. Biological determinism is the idea that bio factors cause our behavior, we know this is false but they do increase the chance of a certain behavior/disorder from occurring.
Environmental determinism: the idea that our environment causes our behavior e.g family & friends, home situation etc. Links to social influence: Asch, Milgram & Zimbardo.
Psychic determinism: the idea that behavior is caused by our unconscious mind. Links to Freud's theory.
Soft determinism is: a middle ground in the debate.
Hard determinism is: the idea that human behavior is completely determined by factors out of our control - no free will.